The origin of species by means of natural selection, or, The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life / by Charles Darwin.

  • Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The origin of species by means of natural selection, or, The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life / by Charles Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    [Chap. VI. it will fulfil all the requirements of natural selection, though it may cause the death of some few members. If we admire the truly wonderful power of scent by which the males of many insects find their females, can we admire the production for this single purpose of thousands of drones, which are utterly useless to the community for any other purpose, and which are ultimately slaughtered by their industrious and sterile sisters ? It may be difficult, but we ought to admire the savage instinctive hatred of the queen-bee, which urges her to destroy the young queens, her daughters, as soon as they are bom, or to perish herself in the combat; for undoubtedly this is for the good of the community; and maternal love or ma- ternal hatred, though the latter fortunately is most rare, is all the same to the inexorable principle of natural selection. If we admire the several ingenious contrivances, by which orchids and many other plants are fertilised through insect agency, can we consider as equally perfect the elaboration of dense clouds of pollen by our fir-trees, so that a few granules may be wafted by chance on to the ovules ? Summary: the Law of Unity of Type and of the Conditions of Existence embraced by the Theory of Natural Selection. We have in this chapter discussed some of the difficulties and objections which may be urged against the theory. Many of them are serious; but I think that in the discussion light has been thrown on several facts, which on the belief of independent acts of creation are utterly obscure. We have seen that species at any one period are not indefinitely variable, and are not linked together by a multitude of intermediate gradations, partly because the process of natural selection is always very slow, and at any one time acts only on a few forms; and partly because the very process of natural selection implies the continual supplanting and extinction of pre- ceding and intermediate gradations. Closely allied species, now living on a continuous area, must often have been formed w'hen the area was not continuous, and when the conditions of life did not insensibly graduate away from one part to another. When two varieties are formed in two districts of a continuous area, an inter- mediate variety will often be formed, fitted for an intermediate zone ; but from reasons assigned, the intermediate variety will usually exist in lesser numbers than the two forms which it connects ; consequently the two latter, during the course of further modification, from existing in greater numbers, will have a great advantage over the less numerous intermediate variety, and will thus generally succeed in supplanting and exterminating it.